Breaking for Fall

My apologies for being MIA for last week's post--we were out of town, and I typically don't like to post then because, well, I'm paranoid.

Also, I was on vacation.

The kids had a week off school for fall break and, coincidentally, we had a couple of days off at the university, so we took advantage of Bubby and Poppy's condo and spent three lovely days in the sunny southern part of the state.

We took the kids to Snow Canyon for the first time. They loved the sand dunes.

We also went swimming, ate lots of food, went shopping, went for a lovely walk along the Virgin River trail, and spent our last morning at the Children's Museum. It was nice to get away--even if I'm not loving the mountain of laundry I'm now slogging through!

NICU reunions

This has been yet another one of those weeks where we get to the end of the week and I don't entirely remember what happened during the week.

I do remember that this has been the week of the "nap-killer" (an ill-timed poopy diaper that either drastically delays naptime or puts it off all together): three days in a row Oliver fought me. Yesterday, he took a very short nap in the car and then refused to nap again.

Wednesday, the kids had some friends come over. I think they mostly obsessed about Pokémon cards (which, yes, they have finally discovered. Unfortunately. But I have to remind myself that I'd rather Andrew obsessed about something that requires him to interact with other kids than with video games). That was fun, but then we were late for Andrew's soccer game b/c of taking the kids home, and Dan couldn't come because his lab ran until 6. I've decided I don't much enjoy solo soccer games--Oliver makes it too hard to watch much of the game. I am very grateful that we have one week left of soccer.

Yesterday, I took the kids down to St. George for the NICU reunion that they put on every year at Staheli farms. We rode a hay wagon, selected a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, rode on a very rattly train, jumped on one of those pillow trampolines, had snacks, and saw some of the doctors who cared for Oliver during those first stressful weeks. He, of course, has zero recollection of that.

I think the kids had fun. I was a little stressed at the end because none of the kids wanted to do the same thing and I was having a hard time keeping track of all of them at once. (Okay, I think "stress" might have been a theme for last week. I have a deadline looming on Wednesday, but things should calm down a bit after that).

So yes, they had fun. And then I hid myself in a writing cave for the afternoon and Dan played with the kids.

I took Andrew and Evelyn for walks this week (separately) and realized I need to do that more: somehow, when they're walking and they don't have other distractions, they talk. A lot.

Evelyn told me: "Mommy, I don't like princesses anymore. Well, unless they have guns and stuff like that."

Andrew and I talked about marriage (his assigned topic for his talk this morning), which led to conversations about dating. I told him it was often a good idea to date in groups at first. He thought seriously about this, and then said, "so like you ask the girl you like and she asks her friends and you ask your friends?" Yeah, kind of like that. "And so, after you date for a while then you get more intense. That's when you start going on more and more expensive dates and to fancy restaurants and things like that, right?"

I thought it was cute that his idea of dating escalated to "expensive dates." I did tell him that money wasn't required. Dating is about getting to know people, and making friends. So then we talked about friends in school and he made some very smart observations, like how having friends means being nice and sometimes doing things your friends want to do even if you don't want to do it very much.

The walks were a good reminder that, as difficult as they can be sometimes, they really are good kids.

I like them a lot anyway.

Split Infinitive

This past week involved a fair amount of tag-teaming as parents (or so it feels).

It was SEP week, which means two things: first, we meet with the kids' teachers. Although in this case the scheduling didn't quite work so I met with them by myself and tried to attend to the teachers while Andrew, Evelyn, and Oliver (mostly Oliver) terrorized the classroom. Both Evelyn and Andrew appear to be doing well in their classes--and both are reading above grade level, which makes me happy. Andrew's teacher said he was a "delight" (so glad he's better at school than at home!) and Evelyn's teacher laughed a little and said she "adored" Evelyn. I may be biased, but I totally get that. She's a funny kid.

Two, SEP week means I spend money at the book fair. At least some of the money goes to the school. Right?

I guess that should have been three things--for some reason, getting out of school an hour early totally throws me off.

We had lots of other stuff going on during the week: scouts, soccer, church stuff, writing stuff . . . and I can't even remember what else.

Thursday, for example: I'd volunteered to help make dinner for a sister in our ward who had hip surgery. Which was a nice idea--but I'd forgotten that Andrew had a soccer game at 5, Evelyn had soccer practice at 6, Dan had Roundtable for scouts at 7, and I had my writer's group at 8. Which made making dinner a trickier proposition than it should have been. I started the soup, took Andrew to his game, Dan came home and finished the soup and delivered it, I dropped Evelyn off, fed Andrew and Oliver, put Oliver to bed, Andrew went to the school to get Evelyn and Dan left for roundtable, fed Evelyn, and barely managed to get the house cleaned before writer's group. Whew. That makes me tired just remembering it.

Of course, it wasn't a perfectly scheduled week: I completely spaced my visiting teaching Monday morning even though I set up the appointment. (*Head-desk*). And this weekend, Dan went on a geology campout in Capitol Reef while I took the kids to my parents.

Dan enjoyed some lovely hikes; I enjoyed what I could hear of conference (luckily--or unluckily, as the case may be--my brother's kids were also at my parents' house for the weekend while my brother moved into his new house. They kept my  kids busy, but they also made a lot of noise). I'm looking forward to reading the talks I missed.

What else? Oh--some good news. :)